150 Years of Border Control: The Legacy of the 1875 Page Act

Recorded on April 23, 2025, this event marked the 150th anniversary of the Page Act of 1875, one of the first federal laws to restrict immigration to the United States — especially Asian immigration, as the law prohibited the importation of Asian contract workers, prostitutes (a provision targeted against Chinese women), and criminals.

The interdisciplinary panel of UC Berkeley professors discussed their current work related to race, gender, or labor in US immigration history or Asian American Studies, and their thoughts on the legacies of the Page Act and related issues for the United States today. Panelists included Catherine Ceniza Choy, Professor of Ethnic Studies at UC Berkeley; Cybelle Fox, Professor of Sociology at UC Berkeley; Leti Volpp, Professor of Law at UC Berkeley; and Matrix Faculty Fellow Hidetaka Hirota, Associate Professor of History at UC Berkeley and Thomas Garden Barnes Chair in Canadian Studies.

The panel was co-sponsored by the Berkeley Interdisciplinary Migration Initiative (BIMI), the UC Berkeley Department of Sociology, the Department of History, Department of Ethnic Studies, the Asian American Research Center, and the Center for Race and Gender.

A transcript of this panel is available at https://matrix.berkeley.edu/research-article/page-act.